Introduction to Neuroscience 2: Lecture 9, Visuomotor Control

Our eyes take in light to perceive the world, and the process by which our brains perceive light information was covered in Lectures 2 and 3. Today, we are going to learn how how eyes move. In this lecture, I describe the two basic forms of eye movement, saccades and smooth pursuit. We also learn the details of how the nervous system controls the muscles of the eye to produce movement, which is a complex problem with a simple solution. We learn about how the superior colliculus coordinates map information from the visual field, auditory space, and from the somatosensory system to control motor reflexes, with focus on saccades to targets in visual space. We also learn about the importance of the frontal eye field.